DHAKA, Nov. 7 (Xinhua) -- Bangladesh has been found to have a software piracy rate of 92 percent, which is number one in the Asian Pacific region and the fourth highest in the world, local newspaper The Daily Star reported Wednesday. A report, Global Software Piracy Study 2006, conducted by IDC, the IT industry's leading global market research and forecasting firm, warned that the software piracy in Bangladesh is crippling the local industry and costing local retailers 90 million U.S. dollars a year.
The report shows that 92 percent of software used on personal computers in Bangladesh had been pirated in 2006. This means that for every dollar worth of software purchased legitimately, nine dollars worth was obtained illegally.
The high software piracy rate has resulted in 90 million dollars in retail revenue losses to the local Bangladesh software economy.
However the report says that the broader economic impact of software piracy is significantly greater.
"Among the many negative consequences of software piracy is the crippling of local software industries because of competition with pirated software, lost tax revenues and decreased business productivity from using unwarranted software," the report said.
Bangladesh has a Copyright Act, under which piracy is a punishable with imprisonment for a term, which may be extended to five years and may be imposed a penalty of 500,000 taka (about 7,143 dollars)
The IDC global software piracy study covers piracy of all packaged software that runs on personal computers, including desktops, laptops and ultra-portables. This includes operating system, system software, business applications and consumers applications.

I think number should be counted in determining who the "Biggest pirate" is instead of percentage. You don't "lose" money by a countries' percentage if the number of software used is like 2 whereas you would lose more money in a country that has ~100 percent software usage but a 3% piracy rate. Stupid China trying to hide their own illegal shiTT

The report shows that 92 percent of software used on personal computers in Bangladesh had been pirated in 2006. This means that for every dollar worth of software purchased legitimately, nine dollars worth was obtained illegally.Did anyone say WTF after reading this? :confused:

Rabz

November 7, 2007, 09:30 AM

Alarming but hardly a surprising news.
Where else, but Bangladesh.

Sovik

November 7, 2007, 10:01 AM

who is number 1?

Ahmed_B

November 7, 2007, 10:41 AM

In a country where about 5% of the population is computer-literate (at best)... stats like 92% bla bla are highly misleading if put under global scale. Also.. the original source of all those pirated stuff in BD are the indo-pak region as well as china.

akabir77

November 7, 2007, 10:45 AM

This is bull report... First stop the pirated CD selling openly then think about SW...

Kabir

November 7, 2007, 11:12 AM

In a country where about 5% of the population is computer-literate (at best)... stats like 92% bla bla are highly misleading if put under global scale. Also.. the original source of all those pirated stuff in BD are the indo-pak region as well as china.

Exactly. And I think, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan should also be added to the list you provided.

Even if you consider North America, a majority of the users of these software always rely on pirated ones...and the number of these users is at least 50 times the number of users in Bangladesh.

No one there can afford to buy them. Either they don't use them or they use the pirated version. A lot of good can come out of using the pirated version whereas nothing good can come out of not using them.

Nasif

November 7, 2007, 05:24 PM

Alarming but hardly a surprising news.
Where else, but Bangladesh.

There is nothing to be alarmed about. In a country where people have hard time meeting their bare necessities, $200 MS XP or Vista is a King's meal. If we ponder too much on that, our next generation would be IT illiterate.

Nothing to be alarmed at all. We should rejoice with this news, computer use slowly reaching the critical mass :up:

Tigers_eye

November 7, 2007, 05:42 PM

hehehe!! percentage!!!
American's are the most borbor jati. Per capita murder is too many to comprehend.
India was the most borbor jati in the past 50 years. They have more arson deaths than anyone in the world. ;)
American's are the worst drivers. Per capita accident is just mind boggling. Percentage, lol.

abdulw11

November 7, 2007, 05:51 PM

Meh...we have worser things to worry about.

shaad

November 7, 2007, 07:04 PM

I remember back in Dhaka in the early '80s, when I had a PC, most software was completely beyond my and most PC-users' means. There was a thriving underground piracy network then, one which involved many Bengali workers and foreigners in embassies and NGOs. Essentially, a week after being released the software was in the hands of most PC users. Almost all software then was copy protected, and no self-respecting PC-user went anywhere without his copy protection breaking utilities.

tonoy

November 8, 2007, 03:00 AM

thank you all for your support in software piracy. its good to still see some decency in this world.

Rabz

November 8, 2007, 04:35 AM

There is nothing to be alarmed about. In a country where people have hard time meeting their bare necessities, $200 MS XP or Vista is a King's meal. If we ponder too much on that, our next generation would be IT illiterate.

Nothing to be alarmed at all. We should rejoice with this news, computer use slowly reaching the critical mass :up:

ha ha.. a really good counter to my point.
I have to concur to that.

zahid

November 8, 2007, 07:08 AM

thank you all for your support in software piracy. its good to still see some decency in this world.